A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE all presumably pre-Roman. The same gentleman obtained from a cave in Hartle Dale near Bradwell rude pre-historic pottery. 1 At Creswell nothing apparently intervened between the Pleistocene and the Romano- British remains. Pit Dwellings, Sites of Habitations, etc. Very little has been done to elucidate this class of Derbyshire antiquities, but it is obvious that there must be many remains of this kind in a county so rich in pre-historic archaeology. Writer after writer has enlarged upon the ' supposed site of a British town ' at Linda-spring near Crich, but no one seems to have thought of applying the evidence of the spade to the depressions." The sites of ancient huts have been recorded on Hartle and Abney Moors, and at Over Oldhams and Smerill Grange, near Youlgreave. On these sites have been found a great variety of objects indicating a lengthened occupancy, extending from pre-historic times into the Roman period. 3 The writer excavated such a site on Harborough Rocks, and concluded that it was British of late pre-Roman or Roman age,* and Mr. Salt has in hand some curious and most promising pits on Ravenslow near Buxton. ' Late ' Interments. In Derbyshire the interval between the barrows last described and those of the Pagan English, presents many difficulties. In the first place, the sepulchral remains which can with certainty be assigned to this interval are singularly few ; and next, there is a doubt as to how far they can be regarded as pre-Roman, hence how far they come within the purview of this section. These remains consist of barrows, of which barely two dozen have been opened in this county. From their extremely ruined condition, little could have been gathered as to their original state, except by com- parison with the much larger number which have been investigated in the adjacent parts of Staffordshire. They have certain points of resemblance among themselves, which mark them off as a class from those already considered. They are wholly or largely built up of fine materials, as earth, clay, sand and gravel ; and if large stones enter into their composition, these are not intermixed with the finer ingredients, but form a platform, a layer or a capping. In every known instance, the interment over which the mound was originally raised had undergone cremation, and this applies to the few secondary interments which have been observed. These interments had invariably been burned on the spot, whereas those of the earlier barrows were more often cremated elsewhere ; in fact, the hard baked floors, strewn with charcoal and ashes, are a notable feature of these ' late ' barrows. The excessive heat to which the bodies were subjected has resulted in calcined fragments of bone so small as often to escape detec- tion, hence these mounds have sometimes been regarded as cenotaphs. 1 Barrows and Bone Caves, pp. 53-8. * jirclnfolopa, x. 114. 1 Vestiges, pp. 126 et seq. * Journ. Derb. Arch, and Nat. Hist. Sot. xii. 109. 1 86
